The hardships of expanding Silent Hill as a series are not that different from why Indiana Jones is struggling while Star Wars or Marvel are thriving, Star Wars and Marvel represent entire universes to explore filled with characters and different literal and figurative worlds, while Indiana Jones is centered on one main character who thrived in the 80's and hasn't been nearly as relevant since. Silent Hill in this case is the real main character of the franchise, and while the first few games are very different from each other it becomes increasingly harder and harder to make something that is both original and unique enough to validate the existence of a new Silent Hill game while still making it feel like Silent Hill. There's an inevitable strain in trying to work within the confines of a Silent Hill game, because so much of what makes a Silent Hill game feel like a Silent Hill game is tied to that original setting despite the fact that even Team Silent was struggling to work with it by the fourth game.
It's because of this that I have a lot of appreciation for The Short Message conceptually, I think fans really need to get over the idea of Silent Hill games having the same exact setting and themes as the older ones if they want the series to continue to get new games. The new themes are also fertile ground to explore some interesting ideas, I liked the fact that this game touched on a lot of generational themes relating to my generation. The game has a lot of cringy topics and moments, but I couldn't really give the game that much flack for it a lot of the time because it felt pretty earnest and I think it was honestly brave to put out a product like this for a game franchise like Silent Hill where most of the people playing were probably going to be old men who don't give a shit about lesbian teenage girls.
Sadly there's one series convention I think that is almost required in order to make a Silent Hill game that's completely absent here: subtlety. Look, I won't lie and say that the subtlety of previous games completely matches up with the Life is Strange type story they're trying to tell here, but it just would have made the whole experience a lot better. There's a painful lack of subtlety here, because the writing isn't really good enough to bear the brunt of the trauma and cringe we're put through, and it would have just been a lot better to have the story be a bit less in your face. While the writing of the teenagers is generally ok, there's a lot less meat to dig into here with there being no nuance to details or ideas to ponder, the text files you see jthroughout the first few minutes alone basically explain the entire theme of the game right away. The voice acting also does not completely live up to the part, I can again say that the teenagers do a pretty good job though there is more cringe here than I would generally like but that's more of a me issue, the adults however are absolutely awful and I couldn't stand hearing them whenever you found their abusive messages. I did like the fact that the voice acting for Cherry Blossom is desynced from her visual performance, I thought it was a very nice intentional detail as it added an uncanniness to it and it reminded me a lot of behind the scenes commentary about how Silent Hill 2 purposely wanted to use more digital looking animation to appear more humanlike.
The gameplay in the game is pretty bad though, while I wouldn't say it's completely irredeemable as you can understand what it's going for immediately and it's pretty inoffensive, I found that the game just kinda dragged on. Not gonna lie for a game like this where you kinda just walk around and interact with stuff the highest score I'd probably give it is a 6/10, so in that respect the few gameplay complaints I have aren't terrible but it just generally doesn't have great pacing - it's a 2 to 2 and a half hour game that feels like a 4 hour game and that's pretty bad. The chase sequences are also pretty bad and feel very tacked on, I did the first three without even knowing what I was doing and I didn't die. I usually don't complain about cameras in games but the camera in this game is pretty problematic, as your phone basically has to alert you before the horror segment even starts that you're about to encounter a chase sequence, completely removing any tension whatsoever. I did like the last sequence though - it was a genuinely great blend of puzzles and horror gameplay and it was pretty intense.
It feels appropriate that Another Code, Celeste 64 and Silent Hill: The Short Message all released around the same time. All are about girls trying to solve some personal struggles, but only one of them is being used to prop up a cold dead franchise. I'm not going to say something like The Short Message is cynical because it's part of a major franchise, you can tell the people who made it put a lot of work into it. But the flaws are all a bit too much, and after a while you have to ask why did this really need to be a Silent Hill game? I'm all for the series changing and having new messages and forms of expression but not even the writing here really takes any queues from the qualities of the older games. And there's a very thin line between trying to use Silent Hill to greenlight interesting projects, and using major themes to promote the revitalization of a franchise. By the end of the game when you get to the parental abuse chapter, which almost feels like it was made to check off a box on a list of traumas and is genuinely the worst written chapter by far with irredeemably bad writing, I started feeling colder and colder to this game despite any good intentions have. For what it's worth I still hope they keep creating original stuff.
It's because of this that I have a lot of appreciation for The Short Message conceptually, I think fans really need to get over the idea of Silent Hill games having the same exact setting and themes as the older ones if they want the series to continue to get new games. The new themes are also fertile ground to explore some interesting ideas, I liked the fact that this game touched on a lot of generational themes relating to my generation. The game has a lot of cringy topics and moments, but I couldn't really give the game that much flack for it a lot of the time because it felt pretty earnest and I think it was honestly brave to put out a product like this for a game franchise like Silent Hill where most of the people playing were probably going to be old men who don't give a shit about lesbian teenage girls.
Sadly there's one series convention I think that is almost required in order to make a Silent Hill game that's completely absent here: subtlety. Look, I won't lie and say that the subtlety of previous games completely matches up with the Life is Strange type story they're trying to tell here, but it just would have made the whole experience a lot better. There's a painful lack of subtlety here, because the writing isn't really good enough to bear the brunt of the trauma and cringe we're put through, and it would have just been a lot better to have the story be a bit less in your face. While the writing of the teenagers is generally ok, there's a lot less meat to dig into here with there being no nuance to details or ideas to ponder, the text files you see jthroughout the first few minutes alone basically explain the entire theme of the game right away. The voice acting also does not completely live up to the part, I can again say that the teenagers do a pretty good job though there is more cringe here than I would generally like but that's more of a me issue, the adults however are absolutely awful and I couldn't stand hearing them whenever you found their abusive messages. I did like the fact that the voice acting for Cherry Blossom is desynced from her visual performance, I thought it was a very nice intentional detail as it added an uncanniness to it and it reminded me a lot of behind the scenes commentary about how Silent Hill 2 purposely wanted to use more digital looking animation to appear more humanlike.
The gameplay in the game is pretty bad though, while I wouldn't say it's completely irredeemable as you can understand what it's going for immediately and it's pretty inoffensive, I found that the game just kinda dragged on. Not gonna lie for a game like this where you kinda just walk around and interact with stuff the highest score I'd probably give it is a 6/10, so in that respect the few gameplay complaints I have aren't terrible but it just generally doesn't have great pacing - it's a 2 to 2 and a half hour game that feels like a 4 hour game and that's pretty bad. The chase sequences are also pretty bad and feel very tacked on, I did the first three without even knowing what I was doing and I didn't die. I usually don't complain about cameras in games but the camera in this game is pretty problematic, as your phone basically has to alert you before the horror segment even starts that you're about to encounter a chase sequence, completely removing any tension whatsoever. I did like the last sequence though - it was a genuinely great blend of puzzles and horror gameplay and it was pretty intense.
It feels appropriate that Another Code, Celeste 64 and Silent Hill: The Short Message all released around the same time. All are about girls trying to solve some personal struggles, but only one of them is being used to prop up a cold dead franchise. I'm not going to say something like The Short Message is cynical because it's part of a major franchise, you can tell the people who made it put a lot of work into it. But the flaws are all a bit too much, and after a while you have to ask why did this really need to be a Silent Hill game? I'm all for the series changing and having new messages and forms of expression but not even the writing here really takes any queues from the qualities of the older games. And there's a very thin line between trying to use Silent Hill to greenlight interesting projects, and using major themes to promote the revitalization of a franchise. By the end of the game when you get to the parental abuse chapter, which almost feels like it was made to check off a box on a list of traumas and is genuinely the worst written chapter by far with irredeemably bad writing, I started feeling colder and colder to this game despite any good intentions have. For what it's worth I still hope they keep creating original stuff.
Spinnerweb
3 months ago